> Kennedy's proposal is also very unlikely to work the way he's claimed it would — the birds that provide eggs and meat on farms are descendants of separate breeding populations and do not breed themselves. So even if there were a population of resilient birds that survived H5N1 infection, that doesn't mean they're passing on their genetic traits to a subsequent generation.
Seems like a rather devastating flaw.
duskwuff · 14h ago
That's not even the worst of it, either. Viruses evolve faster than birds; allowing the disease to spread unchecked is likely to result in more virulent strains emerging. This could potentially include strains which can infect other species, including humans.
tombert · 14h ago
Yeah, that's what I thought as well. Isn't that the reason we need a new flu vaccine every year? Because viruses can mutate and adapt faster than animals can?
I don't know anything about biology so admittedly I'm speaking out of my ass here, but that's certainly what it seemed like to me.
BrandoElFollito · 3h ago
Yes. This is also why in Europe we can predict the efficiency of the vaccine in a given year by looking at how it worked in Australia.
Unfortunately there is not enough time to adapt the vaccine between these two seasons
tombert · 14h ago
If we have learned anything from this administration, even RFK Jr. specifically, is how lazy they are in pushing their agenda.
They published a "report" claiming that vaccines cause autism that was lazily created with ChatGPT that had fake citations, or citations that actively go against what they're saying. Everything in the administration is half-assed.
"Letting the virus spread to pass on the genes" seems like an idea that would come from a conversation when two drunks who are discussing how they'd solve all the world's problems.
xnx · 14h ago
There's no reason to put effort into crafting some convincing argument when your audience is predisposed to obey. This obedience to dictatorial authority is the great asymmetry between parties.
AnimalMuppet · 14h ago
Do you think that makes the Republicans stronger than the Democrats? Or weaker?
I think it makes them stronger in the short term, but much weaker in the long term. (Of course, we have to survive the short term to get to the long term...)
xnx · 13h ago
Agree on both counts, not sure they'll be able to hold it together without Trump, often immitated, never duplicated (I hope).
sorcerer-mar · 14h ago
They are fundamentally absolute fucking goofballs.
This administration is the best argument for DEI I’ve ever seen in my life, if it had anything to do with avoiding this.
Just the other day, RFK’s top vaccine nutjob (new chair of ACIP, Robert Malone) tweeted something to suggest that the Amish’s existence despite waves of infectious disease and ~no~ low vaccination is evidence that vaccines aren’t necessary.
Apparently ignorant[0] of the fact that the Amish are notoriously cloistered and isolated from the rest of society.
[0] By “ignorant” I don’t mean “has never heard the idea,” but that the degree of motivated reasoning has rendered his mind actually incapable of integrating this fact — like many others — into his world view. I’m drawing this distinction because I don’t think this is a matter of smart people pretending to believe stupid things. They are actually, at rock bottom, very stupid people, rendered such by their own ideological commitments if nothing else.
const_cast · 13h ago
> This administration is the best argument for DEI I’ve ever seen in my life
Right, they've essentially implemented reverse DEI: always hire the agreeable white man, no matter what. Which was essentially the status-quo in the fucking 60s.
Now we have a bunch of old white men who can drink more than they can read running our government into the ground. They're all very horribly unqualified. But, they are essentially breathing doormats, which I think is vital to an authoritarian regime.
tim333 · 29m ago
There is a third way - hire the most competent regardless of skin shade, sexuality and so on. It has quite a good track record.
rsynnott · 2h ago
Autocracies notoriously value loyalty and compliance over competence.
sorcerer-mar · 2h ago
Yeah, too much of the vibe around autocracies is that people don't like 'em because they're big ol' meanie heads. No. They're bad because they're literally bad at governing. They make bad decisions.
Democracy isn't good because it makes people feel good, but because in the long run democracies make far more adaptive decisions, and just hobbling along imperfectly over long periods is how you actually achieve growth.
rsynnott · 1h ago
Well, I mean, it's _both_.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 27m ago
One is a precursor for the other. Being mean and inflexible is their means of avoiding personal growth, which leads to the incompetence. Of course, they are exceptionally competent at being mean and inflexible because it’s what they practice in their lives.
But I think the point they’re making is that it’s moot that they are mean and inflexible if those traits make a good government. It is at least more relevant that they are incompetent at governing; even if both points are likely to fall on deaf ears and even if one naturally follows the other.
BLKNSLVR · 14h ago
> This administration is the best argument for DEI I’ve ever seen in my life
I'm going to steal and re-use this beautifully succinct observation in as many ways as I appropriately can.
100 internet points to you.
tombert · 14h ago
> Just the other day, RFK’s top vaccine nutjob (new chair of ACIP, Robert Malone) tweeted something to suggest that the Amish’s existence despite waves of infectious disease and no vaccination is evidence that vaccines aren’t necessary.
What a strange argument. Did anyone suggest that people would stop existing if there weren’t vaccines? We haven’t had vaccines throughout most of human history.
People just (correctly) think that not being vaccinated will lead to a lot of unnecessary deaths.
krapp · 14h ago
"no vaccination" is incorrect. The Amish do have lower vaccination rates than the general population, but many do vaccinate.
walls · 13h ago
This idea definitely came from a tweet he read, and involved no extra consideration.
Analemma_ · 14h ago
Unfortunately it involves too many multisyllabic words for Kennedy— or anyone else in this administration— to understand it, so expect them to plow ahead regardless.
valgor · 14h ago
As an animal rights activist, this will do wonders for the movement. As chicken farms become unprofitable due to all the birds dying, prices will go up. This gives people like me an edge to talk about alternatives. We already do this with egg alternatives due to the increases in egg prices. Hopefully companies like JUST Egg can capitalize on this.
YeGoblynQueenne · 7h ago
>> As an animal rights activist, this will do wonders for the movement.
The article says allowing the virus to rip through flocks could kill "billions of birds" [1]. Is that really OK with the movement?
___________
[1] Allowing widespread infection of commercial flocks would kill billions of birds, drive poultry and egg prices up, as well as destabilize local economies and global trade through import restrictions imposed on U.S. products, the authors wrote. Simultaneously, it could also foster reservoirs of H5N1, increasing the virus' odds of making the leap to humans — and gaining the ability for human-to-human infection.
valgor · 3h ago
The birds are dying anyway. So instead of their bodies being used for profit to continue the industry, they will die with hopefully little to no government bailouts, forcing farmers to change what they do for a living.
ineedasername · 6h ago
I'm guessing the movement figures the birds' 1st choice for their future, a career in the food service industry, isn't going to work out much better for the birds anyway.
tbrownaw · 14h ago
> become unprofitable due to all the birds dying
Isn't this just switching from, if you detect any infections you're required to kill your flock, to if you have any infections your flock will die of illness? Your flock is still dead either way.
senectus1 · 12h ago
you're wrong here... eggs will become obscenely profitable, because of the sheer demand for the things.
Backyard/black market and over seas eggs will be worth an order of magnitude more than before.
And guess what, America will have next to no say in the animal welfare of the source of the eggs.
bamboozled · 14h ago
I'm not sure what's going to happen here, but I'm never going to be eating "JUST Eggs"(tm). Sorry.
I'd like to see a world where animals are treated better though. I don't really understand why food and food production has to be so shit.
aziaziazi · 7h ago
JUST Eggs aren’t the only alternative, through: seeds, beans, mushrooms, grains…
I guess you know that the reason of shitty treatment is price, would you rather buy 20x priced eggs ? There’s many family farms that would be happy to deliver them anywhere at that rate.
tbrownaw · 14h ago
It's cheaper, and most shoppers aren't willing to pay enough extra to cover better treatment. (It's not the shoppers' fault that most of the labels aren't very meaningful? Well no, that means it's not cost-effective to ensure people are aware of that.)
bamboozled · 11h ago
It's more of an assumption that people wouldn't want better food, maybe even more a statement about our culture in general.
cjk · 14h ago
What an absolute clown show this administration is. We’ve had enough pandemics for one lifetime, thanks.
The midterms can’t come soon enough. That is our only hope of putting some real checks on this administration any time soon.
tombert · 13h ago
Since I don't think that the shitshow is going to slow down, I suspect that basically all the damage done in 2025 will be forgotten by most voters. Democrats might do a bit better in 2026, and I certainly hope that that's the case, but I doubt we'll get anywhere near the super majority required to override the president.
Won't this put the price of eggs way, way in the opposite direction to what Trump wants them to go?
It risks the entire local US chicken / egg production industry. They'd have to re-onshore it.
thomquaid · 14h ago
The culled birds definitely arent producing. The proposal here is to let sick birds recover from their flu instead of being killed. True, you can effectively stop the spread of the flu if all the animals are dead, but the flu has a high survivability rate, and so once birds recover from their flu, they'll still be laying eggs (instead of being dead). That seems to be the proposed approach. It matches what we did for covid (we didnt cull the infected to stop the spread--it might have worked though).
YeGoblynQueenne · 7h ago
From the article it doesn't sound like H5N1 really has a "high survivability rate":
>> What's more, the mortality rate of H5N1 is extremely high among common poultry, reaching 100% in domestic chickens.
tombert · 15h ago
It's actually impressive that Trump managed to appoint the absolute worst possible person to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
I know nothing about biology, I know that I know nothing, so if someone decided for whatever reason to appoint me to the position it would be fairly harmless because I would defer extremely heavily to people who actually know about this stuff.
If he had appointed someone with proper medical or biological training, that would be fine because they actually know about stuff and can make informed decisions.
RFK Jr. is the absolute worst person because he thinks he knows a lot about biology, but he actually knows nothing, and is largely informed by a lot of conspiratorial nonsense, meaning he has the potential to cause a lot of irreparable to the US healthcare system. He's not going to defer to actual expertise, he's going to defer to idiotic blog posts filled with anecdotes about how a friend of a friend of theirs got a vaccine and it was bad.
I cannot imagine that this attempt at chicken eugenics will work as intended. I suspect that if this were a good idea, it would have been tried already.
jvanderbot · 14h ago
I'm convinced very little of these folks beliefs are anything more than pantomimed poll results. Oh look at me I'm anti establishment, opposing those that made you wear masks during COVID. Whatever polls well there gives you a lifelong set of supporters.
tyleo · 15h ago
“Worst possible person” isn’t accurate but “worst person ever in the role” probably is.
tombert · 14h ago
Within some degree of reason I think it still holds. Yes, if you actively appointed a doomsday cult leader who wants to exterminate the human race, then that would be worse, but that kind of feels like a contrived example.
Within the scope of "people who would realistically actually be appointed", he is the absolute worst case scenario.
ineedasername · 6h ago
>"people who would realistically actually be appointed"
But really it wasn't all that realistic. Sure it happened, but just 'cause it happened doesn't make it realistic.
rsynnott · 2h ago
It's... hard to imagine someone worse, in this particular case. Possibly someone who was actively malicious (vs just delusionally insane, which seems to be the case here)?
ipv6ipv4 · 14h ago
Picking the absolute worst person for a particular job is Trump’s MO. Trump selects for either compromised individuals, or people with an ax to grind against the organization they are appointed to head. The reason is because compromised people are going to be dependent on his good graces, and hence absolutely loyal to him personally.
const_cast · 13h ago
> It's actually impressive that Trump managed to appoint the absolute worst possible person to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
It's a legitimate and popular republican strategy, I forgot the exact name. They did the same thing with the EPA during the last Trump administration - appointing an actual oil tycoon to head it. I imagine it's pretty difficult to just find an oil tycoon. The idea is to derail the agency from the inside out.
ourmandave · 14h ago
It's actually impressive that Trump managed to appoint the absolute worst possible person to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
And the republicans in the senate approved the halfwit because they all fear getting primaried.
ekianjo · 15h ago
> defer extremely heavily to people who actually know about this stuff.
in a system with high regulatory capture, you would be defering your power to the industry's interests.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 14h ago
"The experts work in the industry they are experts in" does not necessarily mean the experts are bringing incorrect information, or that the outsiders have better information.
ekianjo · 11h ago
You failed to address the capture of the experts I was referring to. Most experts have conflicts of interest, and only very few of them actually declare them.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 5h ago
I was pointing out that you failed to make a strong point in the first place.
ekianjo · 33m ago
Are you suggesting regulatory capture is not a thing?
sjsdaiuasgdia · 2m ago
Not at all. I do say there's a spectrum. I don't think everything a corporation-employed scientist does is necessarily tainted by the priorities of their employer. Similarly, I don't think every corporate priority is necessarily malicious in intent, or must come with negative societal outcomes.
You seem to come from a different presumption.
tombert · 14h ago
Which would still be better than defunding all our scientific research and telling people to eat Five Guys fries because they're fried with beef tallow.
elgenie · 14h ago
Appointing a know-nothing conspiracy theorist doesn't have that exact issue, yes … but in a way where the cure is significantly worse than the disease.
You can cultivate state capacity and independent expertise to reduce regulatory capture, not replace it with a kakistocracy where regulatory capture is instead by woo-woo morons.
tombert · 14h ago
While I would agree with your overall synopsis, RFK Jr. actually has some conflicts of interest with regards to the anti-vax stuff. He directly profits from anti-vax lawsuits, and if he's in charge of the CDC and FDA he has the motivation to try and publish fake reports from (previously) respected departments.
> but in a way where the cure is significantly worse than the disease.
Since the US has by far the sickest human population on Earth (it's not even debatable), I guess the current system has been a spectacular failure. I don't think that RFK is the right answer either, but "continuing on the same path as before" is a bad idea just as well.
> independent expertise to reduce regulatory capture
What is independent expertise exactly? Where do you find virgin experts completely devoid of external influence? I have yet to meet any expert who has never had grants or speaker engagements.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 5h ago
So instead we should listen to the "health influencers" that surround people like RFK Jr?
Are they independent?
ekianjo · 31m ago
I'm not giving you a solution, I am simply observing that the current system is utterly broken. So continuing as is is not an option, obviously.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 8m ago
You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and handing control to insane people in the process.
9283409232 · 15h ago
His idea is eugenics but for chickens. Just let it spread it through all the birds and the ones that get infected will die and the ones that are immune will survive and breed and the chicken race will be stronger for it.
gruez · 14h ago
>eugenics but for chickens
So... animal husbandry?
BuyMyBitcoins · 14h ago
The same for every species that has been domesticated. Corn, horses, dogs, even yeast.
Yes the idea is that birds that recover from bird flu will keep producing. You end up with more live birds than culling entire flocks. Some of the birds survive, because of their genetics.
9283409232 · 12h ago
You forgot about the part where the virus mutates and jumps to humans.
amanaplanacanal · 15h ago
Too bad about the human race though, I guess.
cameldrv · 10h ago
This is a dude who saw a a dead bear on the highway and decided for some reason to pick it up and put it in the back of his van. Then he realized that he'd forgotten he was supposed to have dinner in Manhattan, so he dumped the bear in Central Park. People that expect anything reasonable from someone like this are absolutely delusional. It's just going to be chaos.
babymetal · 14h ago
In the spirit of HN I will only point out here this fact: RFK Jr's attack book on Fauci was extremely poorly produced. Specifically, the text rolled up to the top and bottom edges of the pages as well as the sides. As a bookseller this was a big red flag for me: either the book was poorly self-published, or no-one big (and sometimes reputable) wanted to publish it, and it looked like they were trying to save paper and ink. Also, it has an inordinate amount of footnotes which makes it very difficult to imagine a person following them all. I didn't read the book. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58063409-the-real-anthon... 4.49/5.0 on Goodreads with 8.5K reviews.
[edit]: misspelled "imagine"
sjsdaiuasgdia · 14h ago
It's not meant to be read. The people who produced it don't care what's inside, only that the book exists. The book existing is enough for the target audience to accept that there are valid arguments within. The target audience does not need to read the book, they've already been told what they need to know.
The producers and the audience prefer it that way. It's less effort for everyone involved.
bananapub · 6h ago
not just that, it provides an easy vector of corruption - random rich people or think tanks / lobby groups funded by rich people can just buy (or say they buy) pallets of said book, directly transferring cash to the "author".
tootie · 13h ago
Remember when a slew of SV execs lined up behind his presidential campaign? That was way back when he was a Democrat.
tbrownaw · 14h ago
> In the spirit of HN I will only point out here this fact: RFK Jr's attack book on Fauci was extremely poorly produced.
It's in the spirit of hn to attack the person rather than the specific proposal?
subsection1h · 13h ago
1. babymetal didn't attack any person; they criticized a book's production.
2. babymetal claims to be a bookseller and, if true, they offered a specialist's insight into the quality of the information disseminated by a person being discussed at HN. (Though, their observation was off topic -- like most comments in most HN discussions.)
3. You want HN users, who are mostly code monkeys, to criticize a proposal to address viral diseases?
giardini · 14h ago
babymetal states "the text rolled up to the top and bottom edges of the pages as well as the sides. As a bookseller this was a big red flag for me: either the book was poorly self-published, or no-one big (and sometimes reputable) wanted to publish it, and it looked like they were trying to save paper and ink."
Also babymetal admits he didn't read the book. How can anything he says of the book be trusted?
I read the book. Actually there are two stories in the book, the first mostly about Fauci and COVID-19 and the second about Fauci and AIDS. FWIW I'm glad RFK is in power now.
NegativeK · 14h ago
They said they're a bookseller and spoke only about the physical aspects of the book.
I thought their fairly brief comment was pretty clear.
sorcerer-mar · 14h ago
“I trust the guy who published a paper on White House letterhead with hallucinated citations in some instances, and conclusions in complete contradiction of the cited paper in other instances, and who expressed no remorse for such errors.”
It’s just so incredibly dumb to listen to recurrent (and especially unrepentant) liars. Even if you know they’re lying, your brain subjected to that will break down. Propagandists and conmen through all of history have discovered it. All you’ve gotta do is say it over and over again and hope there are people dumb enough not to stop listening the first 15 lies.
disqard · 13h ago
Indeed, the power of McLuhan's "We become what we behold" is not to be underestimated.
It's why Fox News works, it's why "flood the zone" is a shrewd tactic, and why "alternative facts" was Yet Another Milepost along our journey to the full-blown post-truth America of today.
DemocracyFTW2 · 10h ago
"I'm glad (RFK) is (in power) now"
"I'm glad (the guy who drove to the beach to cut of a stranded whale's head with a chainsaw) is (in charge of our health) now"
"I'm glad (the guy who dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park and threw a bicycle on top to put the blame on those pesky bikers after doing a photo-op with his hand in the dead cub's open mouth) is (responsible for medical research programs) now"
"I'm glad (someone who has been thriving financially on bogus claims to disparage vaccines) is (overseeing vaccination policies in the US) now"
"I'm glad (another incompetent creep) is (joining the gang of criminals known as The Trump Admin) now"
Seems like a rather devastating flaw.
I don't know anything about biology so admittedly I'm speaking out of my ass here, but that's certainly what it seemed like to me.
Unfortunately there is not enough time to adapt the vaccine between these two seasons
They published a "report" claiming that vaccines cause autism that was lazily created with ChatGPT that had fake citations, or citations that actively go against what they're saying. Everything in the administration is half-assed.
"Letting the virus spread to pass on the genes" seems like an idea that would come from a conversation when two drunks who are discussing how they'd solve all the world's problems.
I think it makes them stronger in the short term, but much weaker in the long term. (Of course, we have to survive the short term to get to the long term...)
This administration is the best argument for DEI I’ve ever seen in my life, if it had anything to do with avoiding this.
Just the other day, RFK’s top vaccine nutjob (new chair of ACIP, Robert Malone) tweeted something to suggest that the Amish’s existence despite waves of infectious disease and ~no~ low vaccination is evidence that vaccines aren’t necessary.
Apparently ignorant[0] of the fact that the Amish are notoriously cloistered and isolated from the rest of society.
[0] By “ignorant” I don’t mean “has never heard the idea,” but that the degree of motivated reasoning has rendered his mind actually incapable of integrating this fact — like many others — into his world view. I’m drawing this distinction because I don’t think this is a matter of smart people pretending to believe stupid things. They are actually, at rock bottom, very stupid people, rendered such by their own ideological commitments if nothing else.
Right, they've essentially implemented reverse DEI: always hire the agreeable white man, no matter what. Which was essentially the status-quo in the fucking 60s.
Now we have a bunch of old white men who can drink more than they can read running our government into the ground. They're all very horribly unqualified. But, they are essentially breathing doormats, which I think is vital to an authoritarian regime.
Democracy isn't good because it makes people feel good, but because in the long run democracies make far more adaptive decisions, and just hobbling along imperfectly over long periods is how you actually achieve growth.
But I think the point they’re making is that it’s moot that they are mean and inflexible if those traits make a good government. It is at least more relevant that they are incompetent at governing; even if both points are likely to fall on deaf ears and even if one naturally follows the other.
I'm going to steal and re-use this beautifully succinct observation in as many ways as I appropriately can.
100 internet points to you.
What a strange argument. Did anyone suggest that people would stop existing if there weren’t vaccines? We haven’t had vaccines throughout most of human history.
People just (correctly) think that not being vaccinated will lead to a lot of unnecessary deaths.
The article says allowing the virus to rip through flocks could kill "billions of birds" [1]. Is that really OK with the movement?
___________
[1] Allowing widespread infection of commercial flocks would kill billions of birds, drive poultry and egg prices up, as well as destabilize local economies and global trade through import restrictions imposed on U.S. products, the authors wrote. Simultaneously, it could also foster reservoirs of H5N1, increasing the virus' odds of making the leap to humans — and gaining the ability for human-to-human infection.
Isn't this just switching from, if you detect any infections you're required to kill your flock, to if you have any infections your flock will die of illness? Your flock is still dead either way.
And guess what, America will have next to no say in the animal welfare of the source of the eggs.
I'd like to see a world where animals are treated better though. I don't really understand why food and food production has to be so shit.
I guess you know that the reason of shitty treatment is price, would you rather buy 20x priced eggs ? There’s many family farms that would be happy to deliver them anywhere at that rate.
The midterms can’t come soon enough. That is our only hope of putting some real checks on this administration any time soon.
It risks the entire local US chicken / egg production industry. They'd have to re-onshore it.
>> What's more, the mortality rate of H5N1 is extremely high among common poultry, reaching 100% in domestic chickens.
I know nothing about biology, I know that I know nothing, so if someone decided for whatever reason to appoint me to the position it would be fairly harmless because I would defer extremely heavily to people who actually know about this stuff.
If he had appointed someone with proper medical or biological training, that would be fine because they actually know about stuff and can make informed decisions.
RFK Jr. is the absolute worst person because he thinks he knows a lot about biology, but he actually knows nothing, and is largely informed by a lot of conspiratorial nonsense, meaning he has the potential to cause a lot of irreparable to the US healthcare system. He's not going to defer to actual expertise, he's going to defer to idiotic blog posts filled with anecdotes about how a friend of a friend of theirs got a vaccine and it was bad.
I cannot imagine that this attempt at chicken eugenics will work as intended. I suspect that if this were a good idea, it would have been tried already.
Within the scope of "people who would realistically actually be appointed", he is the absolute worst case scenario.
But really it wasn't all that realistic. Sure it happened, but just 'cause it happened doesn't make it realistic.
It's a legitimate and popular republican strategy, I forgot the exact name. They did the same thing with the EPA during the last Trump administration - appointing an actual oil tycoon to head it. I imagine it's pretty difficult to just find an oil tycoon. The idea is to derail the agency from the inside out.
And the republicans in the senate approved the halfwit because they all fear getting primaried.
in a system with high regulatory capture, you would be defering your power to the industry's interests.
You seem to come from a different presumption.
You can cultivate state capacity and independent expertise to reduce regulatory capture, not replace it with a kakistocracy where regulatory capture is instead by woo-woo morons.
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/22/nx...
Since the US has by far the sickest human population on Earth (it's not even debatable), I guess the current system has been a spectacular failure. I don't think that RFK is the right answer either, but "continuing on the same path as before" is a bad idea just as well.
> independent expertise to reduce regulatory capture
What is independent expertise exactly? Where do you find virgin experts completely devoid of external influence? I have yet to meet any expert who has never had grants or speaker engagements.
Are they independent?
So... animal husbandry?
This even happens to species we don’t intend to practice “eugenics” on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry
[edit]: misspelled "imagine"
The producers and the audience prefer it that way. It's less effort for everyone involved.
It's in the spirit of hn to attack the person rather than the specific proposal?
2. babymetal claims to be a bookseller and, if true, they offered a specialist's insight into the quality of the information disseminated by a person being discussed at HN. (Though, their observation was off topic -- like most comments in most HN discussions.)
3. You want HN users, who are mostly code monkeys, to criticize a proposal to address viral diseases?
Also babymetal admits he didn't read the book. How can anything he says of the book be trusted?
I read the book. Actually there are two stories in the book, the first mostly about Fauci and COVID-19 and the second about Fauci and AIDS. FWIW I'm glad RFK is in power now.
I thought their fairly brief comment was pretty clear.
It’s just so incredibly dumb to listen to recurrent (and especially unrepentant) liars. Even if you know they’re lying, your brain subjected to that will break down. Propagandists and conmen through all of history have discovered it. All you’ve gotta do is say it over and over again and hope there are people dumb enough not to stop listening the first 15 lies.
It's why Fox News works, it's why "flood the zone" is a shrewd tactic, and why "alternative facts" was Yet Another Milepost along our journey to the full-blown post-truth America of today.
"I'm glad (the guy who drove to the beach to cut of a stranded whale's head with a chainsaw) is (in charge of our health) now"
"I'm glad (the guy who dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park and threw a bicycle on top to put the blame on those pesky bikers after doing a photo-op with his hand in the dead cub's open mouth) is (responsible for medical research programs) now"
"I'm glad (someone who has been thriving financially on bogus claims to disparage vaccines) is (overseeing vaccination policies in the US) now"
"I'm glad (another incompetent creep) is (joining the gang of criminals known as The Trump Admin) now"